Amazon Introduces $199 Kindle Fire Tablet

By Dianna Dilworth 

At a press conference in New York this morning, Amazon unveiled four new devices — The $79 eInk Kindle, the $99 Kindle Touch, the $149 Kindle Touch 3G and the $199 Kindle Fire tablet.

The Kindle Touch and the Kindle Touch 3G will compete with the Nook Touch and the Kobo Touch. It is your basic black-and-white eInk eReader device with a touch screen. It has a new feature called X-ray, which is a deeper version of definition lookup.

It links topics in the books to background content things like Wikipedia entires. You can preorder these devices today, they ship November 21st.

The $79 Kindle is based on the existing Kindle but 18% smaller at under 6 ounces. The low price is supported by adding advertising to the device. It includes the Amazon Special Offers and Amazon Local service. It is available today.

The Kindle Fire is a new tablet that directly competes with the Nook Color and the iPad. It is a 7-inch touchscreen tablet that includes eBooks, apps, video streaming and MP3s. It costs $199 and ships November 15th, though preorders are available today.

For more details, check out our live blog coverage on eBookNewser.